Just five years before she matriculated at St. Laurence, an alumna of the Theological School, Olympia Brown, was the first woman to be ordained as a minister in the United States.
Her daughter Erminia became a suffragist activist, and her son Allison, was a member of the Austin Woman Suffrage Association for two decades.
[5] Folsom was part of the leadership of the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), and wrote letters to Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell seeking financial support for an affiliate for Texas.
Both NAWSA and TERA had eschewed a grass-roots approach to organizing, favoring a direct appeal to the centers of power in larger towns while employing techniques of nationally coordinated campaigns.
She found a champion in Granbury legislator, Jess Alexander Baker, who authored a resolution to change the state constitution to grant women the right to vote.
Baker, in turn, consulted Folsom as an advisor for suffrage issues, not only in regard to women, but for other disenfranchised groups.
At the beginning of 1909, Mariana and Erminia Folsom were among the first twenty-five members of the newly formed Austin Woman Suffrage Association.
Allen had been the wage-earner for the household while Mariana worked without remuneration; however, he was stricken with an acute illness not long after Clarence's birth.
They never divorced, but Mariana lived and worked in Austin, while three of the children attended the University of Texas at various times.